


Every Cowgirl Sings Her Sad, Sad Song

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline (Homestuck), Angst and Feels, Beta Timeline (Homestuck), Character Study, Family, Foreshadowing, Gen, Irony, Love, Lullabies, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood, Musical References, Parallels, Self-Reflection, Songfic, well kinda-sorta songfic anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 01:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: You buy the house when you find her. // You buy the house when you realize you'll never find her.





	Every Cowgirl Sings Her Sad, Sad Song

**Author's Note:**

> I started this back in... I think 2012? Possibly early 2013, but definitely within a year of when I discovered Homestuck. I got through Roxy's section really fast, but stalled out badly on Rose's half of the fic until 2019. The main problem, of course, is that there are a LOT of songs about roses (literally and/or metaphorically), but not a lot about people named Roxy. *hands* You'll have to judge for yourself whether my workaround was successful.
> 
> Also, I have retroactively decided that this is a fill for my [Ladies Bingo](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org) card, for the square: _use of symbolism_. Because boy howdy is this fic full of symbolism. *wry*

**Roxy:**

You buy the house when you find her.

It's not difficult. The previous owner died two years ago and his trust hasn't been able to find anyone both willing to live in the middle of nowhere and rich enough to afford the asking price and upkeep. You're already used to living in the middle of nowhere -- your lab is practically next door -- and in addition to the frankly ridiculous salary he's paying you, Jake Harley is more than willing to foot your down payment.

You still don't fully believe his talk of alternate dimensions, time travel, and games that can alter reality itself, but snatching a tiny baby from a meteor impact site before the slowly resurging lake could top the crater walls and bury her in a deluge of frigid water has gone a fair way to expanding your definition of what may be possible.

You name the baby Rose. It's your favorite flower -- you approve of any creature sensible enough to guard its beauty with thorns.

It's downright strange living in a house this large. You grew up in a series of apartments and duplexes in northern New Jersey, shunted in and out of one foster home after another. The sheer amount of space in this house -- ha, in this _mansion_ \-- is bewildering. There are far too many windows, too much light streaming in at all hours and destroying the dark you need to concentrate on the programming for which Harley hired you. The constant rush of water is nearly as distracting.

But Rose likes the light and the roar of the falls, so you think better of your second thoughts and try to settle in.

You keep a backup bedroom in your lab for when she's old enough to sleep through the night, but for now you make do with blackout curtains and way too much caffeine during working hours. You can't even drink as much booze as you're used to, not if you want to keep a halfway clear head for when Rose wakes screaming in the night. Which she does at least every other day -- those thorns manifesting early, you suppose. Good for her. Hiding, keeping quiet, and playing peacemaker never did you any favors. You want her to speak her mind, tell the whole damn world what she sees and what she wants.

Right now what she wants is a clean diaper, a bottle, and human contact. You love the way she nestles into your arms and smiles at the sound of your voice.

"I wish I knew some real lullabies," you tell her, "but nobody ever sang any to me. You're gonna have to make do with show tunes and shit I learned from movies." In a year or so you'll have to start watching your words, but right now you're pretty sure she's too young to care what you say as long as you're saying something and tickling her silly little baby belly. Besides, curses are emotionally cathartic; they help compensate for the alcoholic relief you're not getting. That is cold hard scientific fact and not in any way a rationalization.

_"Goodnight, my Rosie, goodnight my love,_  
_"Sleep tight, my Rosie, sleep tight my love,_  
_"Our star is shining its brightest light,_  
_"For goodnight, my Rosie, goodnight."_

Your third high school did a production of _The Music Man_ your senior year. You understudied Marian. Didn't get to play the part for real -- you know better than to think you'll ever play a romantic heroine -- but you learned all her songs by heart. This one's real easy to personalize.

_"Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be_  
_"Sweet dreams to carry you close to me._  
_"I wish I may and I wish I might,_  
_"Now goodnight, my Rosie, goodnight."_

Rose blinks and kicks, obviously dead tired and just as obviously unwilling to return to sleep. You bet she's afraid she'll miss something if she closes her eyes.

"You can sleep, I promise nothing's going to happen," you tell her, pressing the tip of your index finger to her tiny nose. "Just shadows and silence, like every night. I'm a night owl, Rosie-Rose, but you don't have to be like me. You're a butterfly, a flower, my little rainbow. You belong in sunlight, not the dark."

And she does, oh, she does. She shines, your little alien miracle baby, and you want to give her the world on a silver string, or however that line goes. She's going to be such a spoiled brat by the time she's grown. You just know it -- you won't be able to resist giving her whatever she wants, even if she gets embarrassed and won't ask out loud -- but you don't care. She's yours, you're hers, and that's more than you've ever had before.

_"Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed,_  
_"Some say love, it is a razor that leaves the soul to bleed,_  
_"Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need,_  
_"I say love, it is a flower, and you its only seed."_

You've always liked Bette Middler. You can't sing half as well as she does, voice rough from liquor and the cigarettes you smoked all through high school and college like a dumbfuck, but you think you manage to stay mostly in tune and it's not as if Rose has any way to make the comparison and find you wanting.

_"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance,_  
_"It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance,_  
_"It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give,_  
_"And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live."_

God, you hope Rose is braver than you've been. Even if she isn't destined to play for the fate of the universe like Harley claims, you know she has great things inside her. You don't want to pressure her in any direction. You just want to her to pick something she loves -- like you eventually stumbled into the refuge of math and computers -- and go after it with all her heart. No half measures, no denial, no self-sabotage like you and your horribly necessary booze. Just the target and a shining path to fly.

_"When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long,_  
_"And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,_  
_"Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows,_  
_"Lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose."_

Her eyes are closed now, her arms limp and fingers loose as they rest on her lavender onesie. You press your nose to her hair and breathe deep. She smells of milk and baby powder and warm human skin. Like a little ray of sunlight come down to grace your way before she sets off on her own journey through the cosmos.

You lay her in her crib as the first light of dawn tiptoes in her bedroom window, and pick up your half-full bottle of vodka from the changing table. "Love you, baby," you whisper, and tiptoe out the door.

You can't wait until she says the words back to you.

\---------------------------------------------

**Rose:**

You buy the house when you realize you'll never find her.

It's not difficult. The previous owner died two years ago and his trust hadn't been able to find anyone both willing to live in the middle of nowhere and rich enough to afford the asking price and upkeep. You're downright eager to spend some time in the middle of nowhere, both for the obvious reasons (avoiding fans) and the less obvious ones (avoiding the Baroness). And if your visions mean what you suspect they do, you're going to need a secure base for your fight.

Jade English still thinks you can forestall the end of the world, but you have seen her dead in your dreams, her broken body splayed like a trophy in a lush, green wilderness for her newly adopted grandson to find, and you know better than to indulge in hubris. You will fight until your last breath, and then one moment more, but there are deeper forces at work that you can still only dimly see, and you think perhaps you _need_ to lose, in order for your daughter to win.

Your daughter, whom you will never see outside of dreams. You will never cradle her tiny body, rescued from the waves. You will never blow kisses on her stomach, never comb her hair, never hear her cry. All you can give her is a void where your love should be.

In your darkest moments, you think perhaps that is all you could give her even if she were here with you. Perhaps there is nothing in your heart to share.

But you can leave her a name. A path. A sanctuary.

You call her Roxy. Maybe it's inappropriate for a baby, but _Chicago_ has always been one of your favorite musicals. When you were young, before your third set of foster parents adopted you, you spent a long time hunting through every scrap of pop culture you could lay your hands on in search of women who reach unapologetically for what they want. Funnily enough (ha ha, listen to you laughing; if you laugh and smile long enough you can dazzle people into not noticing your rage), most of those women are villains.

This is not the only reason you decided to become a writer, but the ability to tell stories the way _you_ want, to twist the world into following _your_ vision, is a larger part than you like to admit to anyone.

But you're rambling. Back to _Chicago_ and the power of names. Roxie Hart doesn't get her heart's desire in spite of doing terrible things for selfish reasons, but she does make it out of prison, build a new life, and find a true (if prickly) friendship. Given the givens, that may be the best your daughter can hope for.

_"The name on everybody's lips_  
_"Is gonna be Roxie._  
_"The lady raking in the chips_  
_"Is gonna be Roxie."_

You sing under your breath as you lay out the bedroom you'll never see inhabited. No raised crib, not when you can't be sure any of the strange chess-piece people will know to check on her regularly. A futon with a low railing will do fine, and you stuff a still-boxed IKEA bed in the closet for her to put together once she's old enough.

_"I'm gonna be a celebrity_  
_"That means somebody everyone knows._  
_"They're gonna recognize my eyes_  
_"My hair, my teeth, my boobs, my nose."_

Celebrity is overrated, of course. And your little girl will need to hide, need to fade into the shadows to escape the Baroness's notice long enough to grow up and get dangerous. But nobody should have to hide forever. Nobody should be overlooked. Nobody should have to sacrifice their entire life to make other people happy and keep the future running on rails to some unknown destination.

_"From just some dumb mechanic's wife_  
_"I'm gonna be Roxie_  
_"Who says that murder's not an art?"_

_"And who in case she doesn't hang_  
_"Can say she started with a bang?_  
_"Foxy Roxie Hart!"_

The horror of it all is that your baby girl has to grow up to be a fighter and a killer. There's no other way for her to survive. But you hope with the bitter dregs of your heart that in the vast, blank darkness beyond the end of your vision, she'll find a way to start anew and pull all her wildest dreams into reality. Become whoever _she_ wants to be.

Become a self she can love.

_"Oooh, I'm a star, and the audience loves me. And I love the audience. And the audience loves me for loving them. And I love the audience for loving me. And we just love each other. That's because none of us got enough love in our childhood. And that's showbiz, kid."_

You break off rather than pick up the melody again after the patter. The lyrics strike too close to home.

You could hold your baby every hour of every day of her life, and that still wouldn't be enough to show how much you love her, or how much you hate the path that you and fate have consigned her to walk. You're leaving her blankets, plush toys, art supplies, games, books, sweets: every physical thing a child could want. But you can't be there to dry her tears when she skins her knees, or exclaim over her scribbled drawings, or kiss her goodnight.

You can sing lullabies, though. A recording can't substitute for flesh and blood, but it's better than nothing and you hold on to what scraps you can grasp against the flood of years.

The problem, of course, is that you don't have an extensive store of lullabies. You've done some research to fix this flaw, but in the process you discovered that the vast majority of extant lullabies are irritating beyond belief. Fortunately, babies don't have any innate knowledge of music genres and apparently find any gentle tune suitable for somnolence, provided it's sung well enough.

You have show tunes on your mind already, so when you sit down before the microphone and mixing equipment that Dave provided, you're already humming under your breath as you adjust the various settings.

You stall for a moment before pressing record. It's a question of phrasing, as usual. The flip side of immersion in writerly craft is that sometimes you can't turn that part of your brain off, and you trip yourself up over petty details, make things a bazillion times more complication than necessary until whatever you choose ends up sounding stiff and wrong.

In this case, it's terms of endearment. Should you go with 'my Roxy'? 'My daughter'? 'My darling'? 'Dear Roxy'? '_Sweet_ Roxy'? 'Beloved'? Whatever you choose, it sends a message you can never retract, a subconscious whisper to shape your baby's deepest understanding of the world. Where does the line between an excessive assumption of closeness and a pretentiously chilly distance lie? What will make a treasured memory and what will leave your daughter flinching when she grows old enough to parse the words paired with the notes?

Of all the times seeing the future might be useful, this is surely the most important. And yet, nothing but void gapes at your metaphorical feet.

Fuck it. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith... maybe with a bit of liquid courage to cushion the fall.

You mix yourself a Long Island iced tea, knock it back in two long swallows, and press the blinking red button.

"Hey, sweetheart. Roxy. Dearest darling daughter. I'm going to leave you some lullabies for when the night is dark and scary, or you're feeling lonely, or maybe you just want to hear another human voice. I love you _so much_. Okay? I want you to remember that. If I could be there with you, nothing in the universe could stop me. But I can't, so I hope this is better than nothing."

You clear your throat and wrestle down the urge to either make another drink or delete your babbling.

_"Goodnight, my Roxy, goodnight my love,_  
_"Sleep tight, my Roxy, sleep tight my love,_  
_"Our star is shining its brightest light,_  
_"For goodnight, my Roxy, goodnight."_

This is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done in your life. You don't think you could stop even if the fate of the world hung in the balance.

_"Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be_  
_"Sweet dreams to carry you close to me._  
_"I wish I may and I wish I might,_  
_"Now goodnight, my Roxy, goodnight."_

Your voice cracks on the final note. "Sleep well, baby. I love you," you whisper.

You kill the recording before it can capture your tears at the knife-sharp certainty that you'll never hear her say those words back to you.


End file.
